Thinking
by KyrieofAccender
Summary: The Handmaid's Tale. An additional scene between Soul Scrolls and Night. Everything I used to know before, and was taught at the Red Center, and see now, runs together into one incomprehensible jumble of colors red, blue, green, black… Oneshot.


A/N: Margaret Atwood hasn't requested that no fanfiction of her work be posted, has she? I looked through the rules and haven't found a mention of it, but if there is a rule against it that I missed, let me know and I will take this story down. No harm was meant in posting this.

Again, this is an English project - and I got an A. My teacher wanted us to create a new scene to go in the middle of Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", so we could try our hands at imitating her unique style. I hope I did it justice!

Reviews very, very much appreciated!

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Thinking

It's all a dream, I say to myself. All one elaborately concocted dream, and any minute now I will wake screaming from this bizarre nightmare to find that Luke is beside me, and she's fast asleep in her little room down the hall. It's only a dream. It has to be; it's too strange to be true.

But it's that thought that is the dream, not this reality. When I wake up every morning, I'm still here. I'm not at home. Nothing is the way it was then; the way it should be.

_Truth is stranger than fiction_, someone told me that once. I think it was Luke. It must have been him; he was always reading, always had some phrase or saying like that to toss out. He always did like words. Strange, that something so simple as a word is forbidden to me now.

Not with the Commander, though. I wish I knew why he wants to play Scrabble with me, why he decides that he can break the rules – rules that he made – for me. Is it because he is as lonely as I am? No. No, that's only wishful thinking. It has to be just to prove he can.

He's telling me things, though. Not a lot, but when I asked him, the other night, he did tell me. Some things about the Canadians being uncooperative and rumors of a resistance. I tried not to look like I knew anything when he mentioned the resistance; I hope it worked.

I don't understand why I let this precious information fade from me so quickly. I should cling to it, treat it as something sacred, almost, and yet the more I think on it, now, the more it slips away, like water through my fingers. So many things slip away from me like that, things from the time before that I should desperately retain. But memory isn't reliable, it's tricky like that. And the more I try to remember, the more I think about it during my time here in this bedroom that, I suppose, is mine, the less I can see.

They didn't want us to think much; that was something they told us at the Red Center. Don't think, it will make everything easier, and it's not required of you. Well, I can tell them that they miscalculated a little; they've given us nothing to do _but_ think, there is nothing for me to do but stare at these white walls and these glass-less picture frames and that shatter-proof window, and remember, or try to.

I wonder what Luke would think of me if he could see me now. I know what Moira would think, so I don't speculate about that, but what about Luke? Would he be disgusted with me? Would he pity me? I hope that he would still love me, and get me out of here. _M'aidez_, Luke; help me.

But he can't. I know that. No one can help me, there is no way for me to be helped, no way out of this bizarre dream of a reality.

I turn my thoughts away from Luke, from the past. There is nothing I can do with those thoughts except dream my way into insanity. Insanity threatens all of us, I'm sure, and I don't need to loose the one thing I still have – myself. Instead, I bring my attention back to the Commander. What does he think he's doing, exactly? He'd already been caught at this once. Why didn't the fact that his previous Handmaid had hanged herself because of him seem to bother him at all? Why was he risking himself – me – again?

I remembered something he said to me once, the night he showed me that old magazine. He felt he was beyond reproach. He had illegal things, it didn't matter. There was nothing, he thought, that could harm him. And, as far as I knew, there wasn't.

But there was plenty that could harm me. But I was merely a possession… he could get a new one if I was broken. _Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, _he says. Simple as that.

Technically, though, isn't _he _'the bastards'? He is one of the ones 'in charge,' all this is partially his doing. Why, then, do I not hate him for what he's doing to me, to us? I don't. It always seems like they're so distant, the ones who are causing your malcontent. It doesn't seem to matter, does it, that no one is ever sure who 'they' are? There's never a description of 'them' more specific than 'the government' or something like that. There isn't ever any real, tangible scapegoat. That's clever of them.

I sigh and flop down onto the bed that I suppose is mine, if anything is mine. I guess not even I am mine, truly, anymore. I belong to the Commander. All I have left to me are my thoughts, and even those are fleeing me. If I lose my sanity, the way I have lost all my possessions, all my family, all my hope, what then? What will I be then? At least, if I am insane, I won't care what happens to me. That, at least, would be something good.

I shake my head. It will do me no good to think so dismally; that would only lead to insanity. Instead, I turn my gaze up to the ceiling and absently follow the pattern of cracks in the dull white paint. I had cracks in my ceiling in my room at home, when I was a child. I would make pictures out of them. I try it again now – anything to pass the time. That long line there is a river, and I am following it…

I am in another place, now, another time. I am running – where is Luke? I can't see him, can't find him. But she's there beside me, I pull her along as fast as she will go. But it isn't fast enough. They're catching up to us. I'm crying. I didn't remember that. Brambles tear at my legs, my arms, they catch on her hair, but I can't stop to untangle it, can't stop to soothe her. I scoop her up, try to run faster, but she is too heavy.

I feel myself fall, see her small form tugged away from me. I hold onto her little hand, I scream silently… but she disappears into the fog of memory.

That's all she is to me now. A fading, blurred piece of the past.

Everything is blurred here, all the edges fuzzy. I knew where I stood, before. I do now, as well, or at least I ought to. I am a Handmaid, a possession, a chalice. But there is so much more to know, and that is the only thing I am sure of. Everything I used to know before, and was taught at the Red Center, and see now, runs together into one incomprehensible jumble of colors; _red, blue, green, black_… I remember pointing out to her that, when the chalk drawings she would do on the driveway were washed away in the rain, her pictures were still pretty when they were rained out and all the colors ran together. Anything I see, or think I know, looks like that to me now, a rainbow blur of uncertainties, what ifs, and prohibitions. The whole world has been turned on its head, and we all followed lamely into it, because of that blur.

But what do I know? What could I say? Who would listen to me, or believe me? I'm only a Handmaid, and I shouldn't even be thinking. They told us not to.

It's so hard not to.


End file.
